hi ayalala,
I'm not sure how if the amount of sweat correlates to being in shape or not. My roommie is a marathon runner and is a ridiculously sweaty person. It might just be genes! My dad told me the more you sweat the better in shape you are...but I think he might have just made that up to make himself feel better for being the sweaty type! :)

anyways, bring on the sweat :D

If it makes you feel any better I also have sweat POURING off of me at the gym.

I'm doing the couch 2 5k program which is an interval walk/jog program that gets my heart pounding and sweat pouring all over the place.

Sweat is good! (I might not be a fan of it, but at the gym its a good thing!)

target heart rate- Important! there are the guidelines on the machines that are loosely used to help you maintain your target. you burn more fat the better you keep your heart rate in healthy fat burning range for your age. the higher your heart the better chance you are just giving your heart and lungs a run for their money and possibly some damage.

run or jog comfortably... make it so that you can give 2 or 3 word replies easily but not a full fledge conversation... keep going for 3 or 4 minutes. can you keep that pace? if so.. check your heart rate. that is a good measure of a target heart rate... does it match up somewhere on the little chart?
it should be close within the range but if not-- that is okay. the chart is for reference only. my heart rate runs high when I run according to the graph but I am comfortable at my speed and can maintain for long periods of time.

I hate to grill another sacred cow here but the "fat-burning heart rate" range you see on machines is largely a gimmick invented by equipment manufacturers. Whether you burn more fat or carbs is dependent on your activity level, and is a completely different measure from the proportion of calories burned as fat.

When you're at rest, the majority of calories are burned as fat, around 90%. Conversely, at a full sprint you churn through your glycogen reserves, or mostly carbs. Still, at higher activity levels, you're burning a greater number of total calories, so more movement is always better for fat loss.

For example, at rest, you burn about 10kcal/hr. 9kcal is fat, or about 1g of fat. At a brisk walk/jog, you might burn 200kcal/hr, but the balance may have switched to 60% fat, for 120kcal or about 13g fat/hr. A high-intensity hill run through the wilderness or bouldering a large rock face may take you up to 1000kcal/hr, but even if at this point you're only burning 20% fat to 80% carbs, you still burn 200kcal or 22g fat/hr. More is still better. :)

I agree that for the most part the "target heart rate" in terms of what kind of burn you get is a fad that's come and gone. My understanding is that the current thinking focuses on interval training (heart rate goes up, then recovers, up, then recovers) is better than steady state, though I try to get two workouts of each intervals and endurance (steady heart rate at about 85% of max) during the week.

I'm in pretty good shape and I always sweat a lot. I think its just an induvidual thing.

I once went running with some friends and we bumped into one of their husbands. He asked me if I had gone into the creek because my hair was all wet!

I've just had to learn over the years to always wear hat or head covering to keep the sweat from my eyes. In the winter the hair coming out from under my hat freezes into icicles. Working out inside, I sweat more than outside. Sometimes I even wear those silly tennis bracelet things to wipe the sweat off.

Keep up the good work.